


Hellfire

by Bacner



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: AU - S3, AU - return from the dead, Dark, F/M, Gen, Hellfire, Memory Loss, Revenge, Thomas Ward is dead, no Hive
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-24
Updated: 2016-04-24
Packaged: 2018-06-04 07:43:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,794
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6648487
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bacner/pseuds/Bacner
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Across the multiverse, Grant Ward returned from the dead as himself, rather than Hive. This still isn't good.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hellfire

**Author's Note:**

> Evil Ward is evil. So're Kara and Werner. This is not a redemptive AU. This piece contains some disturbing material. If you're still reading it, you were warned.

...Things have largely come to a head on the 15th day of the return from the alien planet, when Leo Fitz finally couldn't help it and spilled the beans to Jemma Simmons - about the alien planet, Will, Grant Ward and everything. Jemma, who at the best of times could be rather shrill, promptly exploded.

"Sir, how could you?" she promptly asked Phil Coulson, currently - the director of S.H.I.E.L.D. (according to Fury, anyhow). "You knew that Ward had captured me and Fitz, and you still used his brother to rile Grant up further. You really didn't care about us - all you cared about was your revenge?!"

"They have a point, Phil," May said impassively: until Jemma, followed by Leo, had burst on the scene, the two of them, alongside 'HuntingBird' and 'Static Quake' were planning their new anti-Hydra campaign, but now that they too were 'in the know', she decided to weigh in. "This sort of thing...it isn't us. We were supposed to be better this. Couldn't you have just shot him in the head?"

"Maybe," Coulson confessed. "Look, I, I wasn't thinking straight. Rosalind...I don't know what she meant to me and why. Grant Ward...he was out for revenge...he took it. It's just that, I don't know...he knew what he had lost, hadn't he? He wasn't as stupid or crazy as he looked, was he?" A pause. "Well, maybe he was. Maybe we shouldn't have cut a deal with his elder brother, who was a rather shifty character overall himself. Maybe we should've just put him into T.A.H.I.T.I. from the start - helpful information or not, in the end he proved to be much more trouble than what he was worth. I just...for a while he honestly was useful; I just tried to give him one last chance..."

There was a knock on the door. "What?" Phil snapped as he opened the door. "We're a bit busy here right now-" he fell silent as the supposedly deceased Grant Ward reached out and pulled him upwards by the throat.

"Hey, Phil," he said cheerfully with an easy smile that didn't reach his eyes. "Hey, everybody. Missed me? I'm not dead yet, it seems."

"We were just discussing you...Coulson broke your chest, I saw it," Leo said weakly, even as he moved in front of Jemma. There was something new about Grant, something that he, for one, couldn't pick his finger on - he was being too busy being distracted by Coulson, who was being dangled in Grant's grip with all the finesse or focus of a particularly vicious dog carrying around a particularly nasty rat.

"I know," Grant nodded solemnly as he sat down onto a nearby empty chair. He released Coulson, changed his mind, grabbed him again, and punched him, hard, into the plexus. Judging by how the older man paled and just listlessly sat down, all the fight was gone out of him, at least for the moment.

"You were right, Leo," Grant continues evenly, with the same hollow smile on his face. "Coulson did kill me - sort of. He crushed my chest, so I should've died. What he forgot about was the alien that you killed."

"Really?" Leo looked bashful. "What and how-?"

"Malick had it wrong," Grant shrugged. "He's a delusional dirtbag, so of course he got it wrong. The alien wasn't a destroyer, it was a healer and a symbiont. Mind you, like so many alien 0-8-4s, like the Asgardian staff and the witch that came later, it had a price attached to it, and I'm not just talking about his interest in genitalia - especially human genitalia, thanks to Jemma."

"...What're you talking about?" Jemma finally managed to squeak (yes, the FitzSimmons still had issues regarding human genitalia, even each other's).

"Simmons, for months you've been stuck with a man who hadn't had a woman - or a man - in years and yet nothing happened between the two of you? Trust me, you're nowhere as ugly as you think - you were just lucky that Will had needed several months to figure out how the human psyche works in connection to the genitals-"

"Ok!" Jemma yelled shrilly. "Enough with the sex organs! What do you want?!"

"As I was saying," Grant shrugged, "he didn't want to die, I didn't want to die, he wanted off the planet, I wanted off the planet, so we made a deal. It took us some arguing - neither of us was what the other expected or wanted to have, but in the end we made a deal, we came back to Earth, Malick had a sudden case of unexpected death and disappearance - in that order - and then I passed Will on." He paused.

"Speaking of death and disappearance, sir," the young von Strucker - Werner - spoke up as he entered the conference room with an odd bundle in his hands. "It's about the rat."

"Ah, yes. To continue in this vein, Thomas was just as suddenly and mysteriously flayed alive," Grant nodded, as he unfolded the bundle. It was a shirt of some sort, made out of...human skin, however crudely. "In a totally unrelated event I'm here, on this base, as is the young von Strucker, who had done something similar to Fanucci and his son-"

"They thought that they could rob me and mine under Malick's guidance," Werner's smile was very disturbing, to say it lightly. "But Malick is gone, Carmichael cut his losses widely and hid, and Fanucci...WTF did he think I was? Harry Potter?"

"It's possible," Grant replied in a flat tone of voice. "Sometimes people forget that we live in the real world and just pretend that they're characters in a comic book or something." His fingers lit-up with tiny flickers of flame; he pressed one finger into the table; there is a hiss of smoke, and when he lifts the finger up, there is a burned finger print of his on the table top. "Hm. Cavalry? Don't."

The Cavalry's face was impassive. She was fooling no one.

"To continue - or to conclude - with the story," Grant continued, a semi-thoughtful look on his face. "Me and Will didn't keep company for too long, once he healed my internal damage."

"That he did," agreed a new voice, and Kara Lynn Palamas, former agent 33 of S.H.I.E.L.D., trotted onto the scene, carrying a small handheld camera and a photographer's satchel, complete with props. "Hey, everyone. What did I miss? Grant, you didn't put on Coulson's new wonderful cloak onto him - after all the effort I put into it. We already had to throw away the pants - they were rather befouled, shall we say?"

"I told you not to waste your time on them," Grant's head was shaking in disapproval. "We were lucky enough with one piece - this one. And we were lucky that after the alien had healed me, he healed you."

"He finished healing me, you mean," Kara gave a small, happy smile to the big man at the head of the table. "You and your cyborgnetics were doing the job just as nicely, if slower."

"Hey, I kept John alive for the last few years of his life, and I had biological entropy to deal with," Grant grinned back, just as happily. "I knew what I was doing back then - unlike when I shot you," he finished, his smile noticeably dimming.

"Hey, chin up! You shot me, you fixed me, we're getting there," Kara sat down next to her man in a manner rather reminiscent of Bobbi Morse at her best. "It's a long way to go, but we're there already."

"True," Grant nodded and gave Kara an odd look. "Werner, he told me-"

"You told him?" Kara gave the younger Hydra agent a punch on the shoulder. "You promised! You jerk!"

"Still a better man than Thomas was," Grant said mildly. "But still with issues. Speaking of issue - Jemma's got it, if the discarded pregnancy test in the corridor is anything to go by."

"It isn't hers - it's mine," Bobbi spoke before she can catch herself.

"Really?" Kara shifted her stance and looked the bigger woman right in the eye. "Fascinating. Did you give it a name yet, or are you just calling him junior? I'm asking this, you understand from idle curiosity - the first time we talked in private, I wasn't interested in a pound of your flesh - we were trying to be nice. Now, I've been thinking about a pound of flesh, but honestly? It isn't worth it - there's nothing of worth that you can give me." She gave Bobbi a flat look. "This was how it was with us from the start, wasn't it? I gave you everything, you gave me nothing, because you cannot give anything, you're spiritually impotent."

Lance shifted slightly. Kara immediately hit him in the face, hard, with the hilt of her knife - the same one that she had once almost used on Leo Fitz. Hunter was made out of harder stuff and still reached for his firearm - and found Kara's blade piercing his skin and flesh ever so slightly - another push and it would slice his throat and vocal cords clean through.

"No," Grant was suddenly behind the female former agent and moved her away from Hunter, complete with the knife. "Morse isn't worth it."

"I know," Kara seemed to be shaking something off - something that had hit Hunter as well. "I just, it's just-"

Grant pulled something off his belt - a chain with some sort of a blade at the end. He swung it. Daisy barely had time to register the movement before there was pain on one side of her face, and wetness, and-

"Whoa!" Kara whispered in a much happier tone of voice. "For me?" She kissed him, before getting something from von Strucker. "What's that for? Oh. Put it on?"

Grant nodded, even as he put his own on and the agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. were jumping onto their feet, for he had struck the first blow and-

And Grant lit up one of his fingers with a small flame, causing the fire alarm to turn on and spray everyone...no, not with water, but with a mixture of hallucinogenics and aprhodisiacs that Hydra had put into the water ducts precisely for such purpose. And so, Daisy "Skye" Johnson did have her time with Lincoln Campbell (just as Fitz did with Simmons, etc), as she yelled happily (in an insane way): "Take me, you polar bear, 'cause I'm your walrus!" even as the new (but established) Hydra director and his people left S.H.I.E.L.D.'s HQ base.

Maybe NOT the end


End file.
